Every penny that governments, civil society, family foundations, and INGOs spend to help save lives must be taken into account. We’re not talking about a little bit of money here, we’re talking about hundreds of millions of collective dollars that keep people alive who live in low-and middle-income countries. To be fair, in the grand scheme of things, this money is far, far less than governments spend on their military budgets, for instance. The United States spends less than 1 percent of its fiscal budget on foreign aid, so while saving lives through better global health requires a substantial amount money it undoutedly remains a relatively stellar and rather inexpensive investment in our global community’s health, well-being and future. That said, the money that is spent must be used wisely and that’s where it gets tricky.

On Wednesday, March 19th I will be attending the Global Health Best Buys panels in Washington, DC at the Center for Global Development as a guest of PSI to cover not only what makes a global health investment successful, but where global health investments should be made in 2014.  These two panels are designed to ease the trickiness that arises when it comes to investments in global health. The lineup is stellar from Karl Hofmann, President and CEO of PSI to Nicole Klingen, Acting Director, Health, Nutrition and Population for the World Bank and Amie Batson, Chief Strategy Officer at PATH.

Visit www.psi.org/global-health-best-buys for more information and to see the full list of panelists. I will be covering the event live and will provide a recap post later in the week.